Web Miscellany: Compilation #14

Hello, dear friend! Anything special planned for the week to come?

The other night, I sat on my porch and watched chain lightning sprawl across the sky for over an hour and it was truly spectacular. I’m hoping for more of the same in the coming days, perhaps paired with hot tea and a good book.

Next week will be filled with some invasive medical testing and a review of this weeks test results, so the plan is to simply stay positive and find reasons to be grateful.

  1. I am astonished by how itty bitty and self-contained mobile heart monitors are nowadays. Weighing less than an ounce and held in place by three inches of thin adhesive, I forgot I even had it on. Medical technology has become so noninvasive that its wearers could arguably be considered cyborgs, which could be a very interesting discussion for another day.
  2. “Artists do not fear their work, they fear the person they will become. Because all art is a discipline and disciplines carry individuals across thresholds, but new beginnings are frightening and no sensible person dare contemplate such an idea.” (source)
  3. Last year, I backed Simple Happy Kitchen on Kickstarter. It’s a fun and informative book on vegan lifestyle that offers great introduction to vegan foods and guidelines for hitting macro- and micro-nutrient goals.
  4. SNAP benefits add up to $1.86 per person, per meal. Here’s what that looks like. Food stamp recipients are often the most at risk for lifestyle-related medical issues, and I would love to see an initiative to teach such individuals how to optimize funding for better health.
  5. What I’m listening to: Iron & Wine’s The Trapeze Swinger.
  6. Rob Greenfield collected 30 days of trash, living like the average American and then turned the mountain into a suit he could wear. The purpose of this project was to create a memorable visual of how much garbage one American creates. It visualizes clearly how much individual actions matter and how much they add up. So fascinating!

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This is day 30 of living like the average American and wearing every piece of trash that I created. The purpose of this project was to create a memorable visual of how much garbage one American creates. The visual impacted many people, but it also impacted me. On the last day it profoundly hit me how much our individual actions matter and how much they add up. Think about it… This is just the amount of trash the average American creates in one month. Now imagine 1 year… 10 years… a life time… In 1 lifetime you can create a small mountain of trash to leave behind for future generations or no mountain of trash at all. This to me, is proof that our actions do matter. This is just one way we interact with the world. Imagine how much your hundreds of different actions- the food you buy, the products you purchase, how you treat people and animals – add up over your lifetime. You are only 1 human in 7 billion and your actions alone can’t change the whole world. But we can live deliberately and consciously and leave our little section of the world a better place. You can’t clean up all the trash in the ocean, but you can clean up a lake in your community for the creatures and people that live there. You can’t solve world hunger, but you can make sure a few elders in your neighborhood have fresh, healthy food. You can't stop all the bigots, but you can treat everyone with respect and kindness. You can be an example of the world that you wish to live in and send ripples throughout your community that have the potential to ripple around the world. We will never see a sustainable and just world with only your actions or mine. We must change ourselves to lead by example and stand up to the corporations and governments causing the vast destruction. An empowered you will be much more powerful than a hypocritical and weak you. Change starts with you. You can only be you, where you are right now, in the current time. Start where you are and just make one positive change today. Once that change is implemented make another change. Then another change. And another, another and another until you become the change that you wish to see in the world.

A post shared by Rob Greenfield (@robjgreenfield) on

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